August, 2010

After spending 45 days in county jail, Dan Quinn is a free man and he’s wasting no time getting his blood saturated with lines of Stevia and homemade weed butter while rehabbing his injured shoulder with an electronic muscle stimulator.

In this segment, the inventor of Pure H20 tm addresses President Obama (because we all know Barack subscribes to Dan’s YouTube page), talks about how the drink crystals in jail gave him receding nipples and mutters something about wanting to be like TimeCop so he can go back and fight Jack Dempsey, but for the most part he didn’t have anything interesting to say except that he’s planning on fighting stoned in his upcoming stand-up only superfight with Aaron "the fighter-turned-pornstar-turned-junkie on the" Brink.

All I’m saying is somebody better film it, because it’s going to be awesome if it happens.

("Yep, just another day in the life of Mr. International. So who’s gettin’ it first, ladies?" Photo courtesy of MiddleEasy.)

Bellator 25 goes down tonight at the Chicago Theatre, featuring two opening- round bouts from the heavyweight tournament, and a women’s tourney meeting between Jessica Pene and Zoila Frausto. MiddleEasy was on the scene at the weigh-ins, and passed along two important bits of information. First, that Shonie Carter came in six pounds overweight for his non-tournament bout against 8-7-1 journeyman Torrance Taylor, even after Carter removed his purple zoot suit. As MiddleEasy writes: "Bjorn Rebney, the founder and CEO of Bellator, seemed to work out a deal to give his opponent $100 for every pound Shonie was over out of his purse rather than the obligatory 20%. Mr. International eventually cut more weight to save himself some green." $100/pound? Torrance, you got screwed, buddy.

The second notable observation to come out of the weigh-ins is that Zoila Frausto, at 115 pounds, is the most ripped broad this side of Cris Cyborg. Photographic proof is after the jump…

Polish Anderson Silva? Not quite yet, but Maciej Jewtuszko is well on his way to making his name in the U.S. Closing out the preliminary portion of WEC 50 against Anthony Njokuani, things started out shaky the WEC newcomer. Jewtuszko got punched out of the air and onto his ass when Njokuani caught and countered his double-kick attempt. Njokuani made Jewtuszko pay with some hard punches from the top, but eventually decided to let Maciej to his feet. It was a decision that Njokuani would immediately regret.

Watch as Jewtuszko finds the right moment to land a spinning backfist/elbow to Njokuani’s chin. The follow-up guillotine choke attempt doesn’t pan out, but the finishing uppercuts certainly do. The win netted Jewtuszko his eighth consecutive stoppage victory, and his first WEC knockout bonus. Expect to see this guy again in the near future.

("The first time I got shot at in a war … I knew I was in the right place," PicProps: CanvasChronicle)

There are both positives and negatives about this weekend’s Strikeforce middleweight title fight. On one hand, it obviously sucks that Saturday night’s scrap between BJJ whiz ‘Jacare’ Souza and all-around Awesome Dude Tim Kennedy essentially represents another epic fail by Strikeforce when it bungled plans for its totally-rad-sounding 185-pound title tournament. On the other hand, that this fight gives two seemingly very likable athletes their first chance at a major championship, well, it’s hard to hate on that.

Due to a chest injury suffered in training, TUF 6 winner Mac Danzig has withdrawn from his co-headlining rematch against Matt Wiman at UFC Fight Night 22 (September 15th, Austin). Danzig and Wiman previously met at UFC 115 in June, with Danzig losing by a controversial first-round technical decision; the referee stopped the fight due to a guillotine choke despite the fact that Danzig didn’t tap and wasn’t out, leading to an unfortunate "WTFIYP?" moment in the cage. It was Danzig’s fourth loss in his last five fights, and he’ll now have to wait a little longer to redeem himself.

Stepping up against Wiman at the Austin event will be TUF 8 lightweight winner Efrain Escudero, who’s coming off his unanimous decision victory over Dan Lauzon at UFC 114, and was originally supposed to face John Gunderson on the prelims. Now, Gunderson is expected to face returning UFC vet Yves Edwards (38-16-1, 6-4 UFC), who hasn’t competed in the Octagon since his TKO loss to Joe Stevenson at UFC 61. Since then, he’s made appearances in Bodog Fight, EliteXC, Strikeforce, and Shine Fights, and most recently scored a decision over Luis Palomino at last week’s Bellator event.

— If you thought last night’s WEC main event wasn’t as close as the judges scored it, Dominick Cruz would respectfully agree with you. As the reigning bantamweight champ said after his fight with Joseph Benavidez (skip to the 2:59 mark above):

"In my humble opinion, I thought I won all the rounds…I think that the crowd has a big part to play in the judges’ opinion sometimes. Also, he caught me with a real slick knee up against the cage that made me bleed real bad. I would assume the blood could have swayed the judges a little as well."

Benavidez was also surprised that one of the judges saw it his way: "I figured I didn’t do enough to win, but I wasn’t watching the fight, so when the judge did say my name it was quite a surprise. I was like "wow, could this happen? Is this, like, the work of God or something?" For the record, FightMetric gave every round to Cruz for outpointing Benavidez in striking (103-46 total) and takedowns (5-0 total).

— $10,000 performance bonuses were handed out to the following fighters…Knockout of the Night:Newcomer Maciej Jewtuszko for using a spinning back elbow and a pair of nasty uppercuts to wreck Anthony Njokuani in 96 seconds.Submission of the Night:Anthony Pettis for finishing Shane Roller via triangle choke with just nine seconds left in the fight, after wearing Roller down with his impressively-flashy striking attacks. (How ’bout that capoeira head kick in round one?)Fight of the Night:Scott Jorgensen and Brad Pickett for their 15-minute smash-up which went all over the cage and didn’t slow down for one second. Round two was easily one of the best MMA rounds of 2010.

The fact that six out of 10 fights on the card went to the judges’ scorecards is a testament to the WEC matchmaker Sean Shelby’s adeptness, because even the bouts that went the distance were wars of attrition in which both fighters left everything in the cage.

A few up-and-comers climbed further up the title contention ladder while a few others dropped a few rungs down, but none of the fights were disappointing.The only real question mark of the show was which fights the judges were watching as they seem to have decidedly different opinions on who won a few of the bouts.

In the main event of the evening, bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz controlled the majority of action, possibly losing two rounds of the five round title affair to challenger Joseph Benavidez. Benavidez landed a handful of power shots throughout the bout, but it was Cruz’s takedowns that were the real deciding factor in the fight.

Personally, I had the fight at 49-46 for Cruz, but it arguably could have gone 48-47 depending on how you look at round two. For Nelson "Doc" Hamilton to score the the bout 48-47 for Benavidez it makes me wonder if he was watching America’s Got Talent on his iPhone instead of watching the fight.

(I have to admit, I was skeptical when FEG announced their business plan using a map with a spaceship on it that would shuttle fighters to events around the world.)

Ever since news of DREAM stiffing a number of fighters of their contracted fight purses including Gary Goodridge, Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza and featherweight champ Bibiano Fernandes, rumors have been running rampant about how dire of financial difficulty the Japanese promotion is in.Nightmare of Battle does a great job in summing up exactly what the issues have been for FEG that have led to the company being barely able to keep its head above water.